Re: Green River Bourbon?

From the Regan's book "the Book of Bourbon" -- The distillery in Owensborough, KY was around as early as 1889 and was bought by the Medley family in 1940. The Medleys reportedly sold this distillery in 1959 but still ran it. Other Medley brothers bought a different distillery in 1960 and closed it in 1987. According to John Lipman's web site, "At one point, they owned and operated three distilleries all in a row along the western side of Owensboro. The middle one of these is the current Charles Medley site." (http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey/)
John may know if one of those is the old Green River.

Re: Green River Bourbon?

I think Green River was yet another distillery in the Owensboro area which, like Shively, once contained several. Sam Medley occasionally monitors this forum; maybe he can give us some good background on Green River. I know it mostly as a distillery that did quite a bit of promotional merchandising (watch fobs, pocketknives, tokens, corkscrews), and of course that picture of the old black guy standing next to the swayback horse with the jug of Green River, the whiskey with no regrets, born and bred in ol' Kentucky. With all that stuff still circulating amoung collectors, and with the renewed interest of bourbon hobbiests (such as the Boston BourbonBoys), whoever owns the Green River label ought to give some serious thought to bringing out a comemmoratve bottling.

Re: Green River Bourbon?

Green River was a very big brand before prohibition. It was the "Whisky without the Headache" and was made in Owensboro, Ky. The distillery was destroyed by a fire in 1918 but there are several of the original warehouses located at Charles Medley's distillery. The brand is currently owned by United Distillers, who acquired it when they bought Schenley. This was a brand that we tried to revive for the Eastern European market except Green River to them meant a polluted river so the brand is still a dead brand.
Mike Veach